personal and professional musings from a Jesus-loving, center-right chica navigating life and faith in the ELCA ("takin' this bound conscience thing out for a test drive")

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Relationship-ness

I am tired. I am really, really tired.

Part of what's going on, I suppose, is just the general "being a senior" thing. Every time I've "been a senior" (high school and college), I've clung like crazy to everything and everybody - all the lasts, and the never agains. All the perfect memories and ridiculous drama. All the best friends and favorite teachers. What can I say? I'm an emotional sucker.

And I'm there again now. It's making me crabby - I want to spend every free moment with my friends, experiencing our life together, and alternately, I want to not see them at all, thinking, I think, that I can protect myself from hurting by guarding my heart and my life.

So I think some of my "tiredness" is really my own typical senioritis. Part of it, also, is not knowing what's next for me. I don't know if I got into any grad schools. I have to wait until April to try to get approved, and if that works, then I'll do assignment in the fall. So there's the knowledge that all of this is ending, but that there's no new beginning to look forward to. Who knows what will happen? It could all come together, or I could fall flat on my face.

Some of it is the spinster factor. I thought by now I would have my life together - career, husband, kids. I have none of that. None. I hate it, it's scary, it's depressing, and it's embarrassing. What is wrong with me? Why can everyone else get it together, except for me? Why can every other girl find a boy who loves her, except for me? Why can everyone else be normal, except for me?

So there's that. And tied in with that, I think, and a big, big part of it is just being tired of saying goodbye. I have never lived more than three years in one location. I have always said that I loved growing up in the Army, and the opportunities it afforded me to see the world, to learn and grow in ways that so many others didn't, to be open to new things and new people, and so on. But I'm in a place right now where I don't like it. Where I realize that for the last thirty years, all I've done is say goodbye. Over, and over, and over again. I'm tired of the fact that I have no home, that going to my parents' house is like going to a hotel, that I have no childhood friends, that I have no roots.

I am tired of making friends only to see them (or me) leave. I'm tired of everyone I love eventually not being around anymore. I'm tired of having to work so hard to maintain the relationships I care about. I'm tired of being at least a four-hour drive away from anybody I've known more than four years. I'm tired of knowing that in 80...79...78...days I'm going to graduate and the same thing will happen that's been happening all my life: all of the people I love and care about will be gone.

And I hate this because it's keeping me from enjoying the things that are good - the time I do have with everyone. Because every time I laugh, I think to myself, "I'm never going to get to do this with this person again". I'm tired of being afraid to be anywhere in public for fear that anything - everything - God only knows what - might cause me to start crying.

And I'm tired of it not being okay to feel these things. I'm tired of the voice inside my head that keeps saying, "Come on now, get it together." I'm tired of feeling so pathetic every time I go through this stuff in my head, and I'm tired of feeling like the only acceptable answer to the question, "How are you?" is "Fine", even though I'm clearly anything but.

Ugh. I'm sorry for letting all the not-fine-ness and depression leak out all over the interwebs. Ah well, it's my blog. Don't like it? Don't read it.

1 comment:

Love you! You have a place here for some rejuvenation when you have some of that downtime and need to recover from all of your goodbyes. Not all goodbyes are forever. <3 Remember? Miss you Kates; hang in there!

About Me

I am a walking dialectic, so I suppose it's good that I'm a Lutheran. I'm into the Bible, geeky theology stuff, and staying up past my bedtime. I'm definitely "my own person" and I ask lots and lots of questions. I feel like I just wrote a personal ad.

Beautiful and Important

"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross". ~ Colossians 1:15-20